Have you ever used disposable chopsticks at a Chinese or Japanese restaurant in the United States, or elsewhere? Well, you may be surprised at how large the chopstick market is. The Wall Street Journal (2/8/08) reports in “Banned in Beijing: Chinese See Green Over Chopsticks” the staggering size and environmental cost of disposable chopsticks in China:
“…Disposable chopsticks are under attack all across China. Over the past three decades, the snap-apart sticks have become a staple of hectic city life, used by everyone from migrant workers eating fish balls at street stalls to busy professionals ordering takeout sashimi. China’s disposable-chopstick factories turn out roughly 63 billion pairs each year. But to China’s growing ranks of environmentalists, the splintery sticks have become a contemptible symbol of the nation’s out-of-control consumption, as well as a threat to forests. The campaign to banish them from Chinese tables is pitting environmentalists against the nation’s booming disposable-chopstick industry, which employs more than 100,000 people. Since November, about 300 Beijing restaurants have vowed to replace disposable chopsticks with reusables. Big companies, including Microsoft, Intel Corp. and International Business Machines Corp., which already use reusables have invited Greenpeace to stage antichopstick rallies in their cafeterias. And chopsticks-bashing has become the cause du jour of some of China’s pop stars.”
The chopstick industry defends itself stating that disposable chopsticks are made from “fast-growing woods like birch, poplar and bamboo that are not endangered…and often uses leftover wood that is not suitable for other industries.”
63 billion pairs of chopsticks – that’s a lot of chopsticks! And I cannot even imagine 100,000 Chinese being employed to manufacture those disposable chopsticks. Are the chopsticks manually carved? Pretty amazing amount of waste when you think about all those chopsticks being thrown away – at least I hope they are biodegradeable. The article goes on to describe the “B.Y.O.C.” – Bring Your Own Chopstick push by activists, promoting the idea of carrying around your own pair of chopsticks to use, wash, and re-use. So for those of you who are environmentally conscious, the next time you go out to dine for Chinese or Japanese, perhaps you should think about bringing your own pair of chopsticks?
About John
I'm a Taiwanese-American and was born & raised in Western Massachusetts, went to college in upstate New York, worked in Connecticut, went to grad school in North Carolina and then moved out to the Bay Area in 1999 and have been living here ever since - love the weather and almost everything about the area (except the high cost of housing...)
